[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 14 | May 26, 2014 | ISSN 0975-3036]

Introduction

At the height of the Communicative Approach to language teaching in the late Eighties and in the early Nineties, it had become fashionable to speak derisively of translation, and also to some extent of editing, for its association with the ‘old-fashioned’ Grammar Translation Method¹ (Duff 160). It was largely felt that translation and editing were drab academic exercises with no use for interactive and communicative use of language in classrooms and that they were more or less professional or commercial in their application.  However, of late there has been a revival of interest in translation and editing studies and in their adaptability and suitability for language classrooms to help learners learn the language rather than learn ‘about’ the language. Štulajterova points to this new trend (1),

Until recently, translation was out of favour with the language teaching community [. . . .] The reason why translation is, even today, ignored by many teachers as an effective language learning activity is mainly because teachers often feel that translation involves no oral interaction and therefore is not a communicative activity, and that it is not suited to the general needs of the language learner. Moreover, many of them consider use of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching undesirable, or feel that translation is time-consuming, boring and irrelevant. This does not have to be the case.

What Štulajterova speaks about translation is also true of editing. Like translation, editing too was misunderstood, but editing can be effectively used in different teaching contexts ranging from instruction to evaluation and to improve all the four language skills including oral skills if used resourcefully by a teacher. (more…)